4 Exercises To Strenghen Your Pelvic Floor Seated

31 May 4 Exercises To Strenghen Your Pelvic Floor Seated

Doing pelvic floor exercises to strengthen your pelvic floor offers many benefits, on both physical and emotional levels, and requires a relatively small time commitment. The pelvic floor exercise routines you’ll find in the Bwom app (available on App Store or Play Store) contain kegel exercises and hypopressive exercises and can be done in just 10 minutes- a small investment of time for big gains in your health and quality of life.

Still not convinced? Are you just always pressed for time? We’ve got a great solution: use the down time you’ve got seated on your commute to do pelvic floor exercises like Kegel or hypopressive exercises that strengthen your pelvic floor. We sit everywhere, in school, work, and even in most forms of public and private transportation. So why don’t we use all of this in-between time to do something good for our bodies and health? It’s your decision: Candy Crush or your health.

We know that making something a habit can be a challenge. That’s why we’re recommending a plan with pelvic floor exercises that can be done during down time like the boring commute back and forth to work, the endless waits in the waiting room at the dentist or even at the grocery store checkout!

Pelvic floor exercise plan

This is a 2-week plan with two different pelvic floor exercises for each week: one kegel exercise and one hypopressive excersise.

Note: these exercises are a sample of general exercises for strengthening the pelvic floor. The Bwom app offers a pelvic floor evaluation test and customized exercise plans based on your answers to that test. We recommend taking the test to find pelvic floor exercises designed to fit your needs and goals. In addition, the recommendation for how often the exercises should be performed will vary based on your level.

Week 1

Exercise 1: Commute Kegel

Position: Seated with your back straight and well supported by the back of your seat (car, bus, train). Knees aligned with the hips.

Exercise: Contract the muscles of your pelvic floor. How do I do that? Imagine that you want to close your vagina or you want to keep from passing gas. It’s as if you want to close your vagina from front to back and side to side. This movement is performed by the muscles of the pelvic floor. Feel and observe what happens in your vagina during the contraction and also during the relaxation. The most important thing is to feel the movement of these internal muscles.

Pattern: Hold the contraction for 1 second and rest for 5 seconds. Repeat 10 times.

Exercise 2: Hide your belly button

This is an exercise for activating your abdominal girdle. When your abdominal girdle is strong and toned, it will help support your pelvic organs and will release tension placed on the pelvic floor.

Position: Seated with your back straight and well supported on the back of your seat. Align your knees to your hips. Place your hands under your belly button.

Exercise: Take a deep breath and exhale, pulling your belly button in toward your spine and upward, as if you want to bring it up into your chest. Make the exhale last for 10 seconds.

Pattern: Repeat 10 times.

Week 2

Exercise 1: Fine-tuning your Kegels

Position: Seated with your back straight and well supported on the back of your seat. Knees aligned with your hips.

Exercise: This exercise consists of contracting the muscles of the pelvic floor at 50% intensity and holding the contraction for 5 seconds. Note how your pelvic floor rises during the contraction and lowers when you relax it.

Pattern: Repeat 10 times.

Exercise 2: Hide your belly

Position: Seated at the edge of your seat with your back straight. Knees lined up with your hips. Hands resting on your knees, with your elbows bent and pushed outward.

Exercise: We will be doing “hypopressive” breathing. If you’ve never tried it before, here are the steps:

Step 1. Inhale and really expand your ribcage….Step 2. Exhale all the air and when there isn’t anything left, keep from breathing. It might help you to plug your nose with one hand and keep your mouth closed tight. After a little practice, you won’t need to do that part anymore.Step 3: Now expand your ribcage again, as if you were inhaling but without actually doing it. Now hold this position for 4 seconds. Next, breathe and rest. Keep your shoulders and chin down. They should be relaxed, along with your pelvis.